Diachronous development of Great Unconformities before Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth Rebecca M. Flowersa,1, Francis A. Macdonaldb, Christine S. Siddowayc, and Rachel Havraneka aDepartment of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; bEarth Science Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; and cDepartment of Geology, The Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Edited by Paul F. Hoffman, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada, and approved March 6, 2020 (received for review July 30, 2019) The Great Unconformity marks a major gap in the continental precisely because the Great Unconformities mark a large gap in geological record, separating Precambrian basement from Phan- the rock record, the erosion history leading to their formation erozoic sedimentary rocks. However, the timing, magnitude, cannot be investigated directly by study of preserved units. spatial heterogeneity, and causes of the erosional event(s) and/ Past work leads to at least four general models for the timing or depositional hiatus that lead to its development are unknown. and magnitude of pre-Great Unconformity continental erosion, We present field relationships from the 1.07-Ga Pikes Peak batho- which are depicted in Fig. 1. Some have proposed major erosion lith in Colorado that constrain the position of Cryogenian and of the continents associated with assembly of the supercontinent Cambrian paleosurfaces below the Great Unconformity. Tavakaiv Rodinia and mantle upwelling below it prior to 850 Ma (Hy- sandstone injectites with an age of ≥676 ± 26 Ma cut Pikes Peak pothesis 1) or with the early diachronous breakup of Rodinia granite. Injection of quartzose sediment in bulbous bodies indi- between 850 and 717 Ma (Hypothesis 2) (10–17). Others argue cates near-surface conditions during emplacement. Fractured, for an association with the Cryogenian Snowball Earth glacia- weathered wall rock around Tavakaiv bodies and intensely altered tions from 717 to 635 Ma (Hypothesis 3) (18–22). Still others basement fragments within unweathered injectites imply still ear- suggest that the appearance of animals and modern ecosystems lier regolith development. These observations provide evidence was the product of nutrient delivery via erosion and an increase that the granite was exhumed and resided at the surface prior in atmospheric oxygen at the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition at to sand injection, likely before the 717-Ma Sturtian glaciation for ca. 540 Ma (Hypothesis 4) related to the “transgressive buzzsaw” the climate appropriate for regolith formation over an extensive and subsequent burial (4, 5), later rifting of Laurentian margins region of the paleolandscape. The 510-Ma Sawatch sandstone di- (23, 24), or the Pan-African and Transantarctic orogenies and rectly overlies Tavakaiv-injected Pikes granite and drapes over construction of the supercontinent Pannotia (25, 26). core stones in Pikes regolith, consistent with limited erosion be- A critical question is if the Great Unconformity represents a tween 717 and 510 Ma. Zircon (U-Th)/He dates for basement be- single, global exhumation pulse (2, 4, 5) as the models above low the Great Unconformity are 975 to 46 Ma and are consistent typically assume, or if it is composite in origin (27). It is possible with exhumation by 717 Ma. Our results provide evidence that most that there are multiple Great Unconformities, which formed erosion below the Great Unconformity in Colorado occurred before over hundreds of millions of years due to diachronous regional the first Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth and therefore cannot be a tectonic phenomena. Multiple spatially heterogeneous exhuma- product of glacial erosion. We propose that multiple Great Uncon- tion events driven by several of the above mechanisms could formities developed diachronously and represent regional tectonic combine to generate one amalgamated gap of lengthy duration features rather than a synchronous global phenomenon. over a broad geographic scale. Arguments that Great Un- conformity erosion surface formation was a global phenomenon Great Unconformity | Snowball Earth | thermochronology | zircon (U-Th)/ use geochemical proxy data or preserved sediment volumes on He | injectites North America to indirectly infer erosion flux and nutrient de- livery across the Great Unconformity (2, 4, 5) rather than di- he Great Unconformity is an iconic geologic feature that rectly analyzing the age of the erosion surfaces. However, Tclassically marks the boundary between unfossiliferous Pre- interpretations of these geochemical records are nonunique, and cambrian rocks and fossiliferous Phanerozoic strata. To Charles the surfaces themselves are poorly dated. Deciphering the age of Darwin (1), the “sudden appearance” of complex macroscopic fossils in Cambrian strata necessitated a global stratigraphic Significance omission to reconcile the fossil record with Darwinian gradual- ism. Although subsequent concepts of extinction and radiation Erosion below the Great Unconformity has been interpreted as eliminated the need of a global time gap to explain the fossil a global phenomenon associated with Snowball Earth. Geo- record, the notion of a Late Neoproterozoic to Cambrian global logical relationships and thermochronologic data provide evi- unconformity has persisted (2–5). Particularly, the Great Un- dence that the bulk of erosion below the Great Unconformity conformity in North America, where the base of the Cambrian in Colorado occurred prior to Cryogenian glaciation. We sug- transgressive sequence commonly overlies Precambrian base- gest that there are multiple, regionally diachronous Great Un- ment (6), has been globally correlated with Late Neoproterozoic conformities that are tectonic in origin. to Cambrian unconformities on other continents (2–5). Recently, inferred erosion across these Great Unconformities has been Author contributions: R.M.F. and F.A.M. designed research; R.M.F., F.A.M., C.S.S., and R.H. associated with a variety of changes in the Earth System, in- performed research; and R.M.F., F.A.M., and C.S.S. wrote the paper. cluding the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth (2), the initiation of Competing interest statement: P.F.H. and F.A.M. are coauthors on three papers, most modern plate tectonics (3), oxygenation of the ocean and at- recently in 2017. mosphere (4), and the Cambrian Explosion (5). However, the This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. timing, magnitude, and causes of erosion below the Great Un- Published under the PNAS license. conformities, and whether their development was globally syn- 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected]. chronous or diachronous, are unknown. Although much work This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/ has focused on Cambrian sedimentary records that locally rest on doi:10.1073/pnas.1913131117/-/DCSupplemental. older strata or that unconformably overlie basement (7–9), First published April 27, 2020. 10172–10180 | PNAS | May 12, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 19 www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1913131117 Downloaded by guest on September 24, 2021 Routt and Berthoud plutonic suites (29). The batholith is dom- inated by the coarse-grained Pikes Peak granite (30) that was emplaced at 1,066 ± 10 Ma (31). The batholith likely crystallized at depths <5 km based on the low water content and late-stage crystallization temperatures of 720 °C to 700 °C estimated for the magmas and may even have breached the surface (32). Three areas within the batholith characterized by concentric flow structures may underpin former calderas, further supporting shallow batholith emplacement (29). At Pikes Peak, one of these intrusive centers encompasses the southern lobe of the batholith (29). Initial rapid cooling following Pikes Peak batholith em- placement is documented by 10 hornblende 40Ar/39Ar dates from Fig. 1. Hypothesized exhumation histories below the Great Unconformity. 1,080 ± 3 to 1,068 ± 2 Ma, 4 biotite 40Ar/39Ar plateau dates from Orange bars depict geological constraints from Colorado. Hypothesis 1 (H1) 1,079 ± 3 to 1,073 ± 2 Ma, and K-feldspar 40Ar/39Ar data that depicts major erosion of the continents associated with assembly of the ∼ supercontinent Rodinia and mantle upwelling below it (14, 17). Hypothesis 2 suggest low-temperature cooling by 1,000 Ma (33). An apatite (H2) depicts major erosion associated with the early breakup of Rodinia (10–13, 15, 16). Hypothesis 3 (H3) depicts an association with the Cryogenian Snowball Earth glaciations (18–22). Hypothesis 4 (H4) depicts major erosion associated with the Cambrian transgressive buzzsaw and subsequent burial (4, 5), later rifting of Laurentian margins (23, 24), or the Pan-African orogeny and Transantarctic orogenies and construction of the supercontinent Pannotia (25, 26). An alternative hypothesis is that there are multiple Great Unconfor- mities representing diachronous regional phenomena, and these features de- veloped predominantly on Laurentia and its conjugate rifted margins. the Great Unconformity at specific localities by constraining Precambrian basement exhumation histories prior to Paleozoic overlap assemblages is required to test the competing hypotheses EARTH, ATMOSPHERIC, AND PLANETARY SCIENCES for Great Unconformity formation and tease out potential complexities in its origins. Recent work has used advances in thermochronology to con- strain major cooling events preceding Great Unconformity de- velopment in the Ozark Mountains of the central